


Blooming.

by FromAnonymousToZ



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Blooming, Dormant plants, He's a plant right?, He's gotta bloom at some point right?, M/M, So...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22944430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromAnonymousToZ/pseuds/FromAnonymousToZ
Summary: The Beast really shouldn't spend so much time in Pottsfeild.He scratches at the fresh green buds along his antlers.It had been so long since he had grown that he had thought the cold had finally put his wood dormant.Wishful thinking he supposes.
Relationships: The Beast/Enoch (Over the Garden Wall)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 85





	Blooming.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a shorter little story, I've played with the concepts in my notes but https://wheatu.tumblr.com/ has some doodles of the beast blooming which kicked me into gear to finish this.

The Beast really shouldn't spend so much time in Pottsfeild.

He scratches at the fresh green buds along his antlers. 

It had been so long since he had grown that he had thought the cold had finally put his wood dormant.

Wishful thinking he supposes.

The Beast is a lot of things, but when it comes to his physical form he’s wood. 

A tree that refuses to put down roots, his branches his open antlers and his bark marred with souls like the harsh knife marks of a young love in a fresh sapling. 

When he was newer, and his forest wilder, the trees closer together, he would often snap off one of his antlers in his carelessness. 

Carefully bound to it’s stump the antler would grow back like a branch grafted onto a tree, he had done it so often in the past the first time he truly lost one he had been shocked to find out he could regrow one on his own. 

He had never been short by a mortal’s measure, but there was a time when he was short-er, and then in warm thaws, his wooded body filled with pain, he had grown. 

It was slow, far slower than the natural growth of his trees, but as the years passed on he began to notice it, when it became hard to get into mortal doorways and easy to reach windows, and as the world got colder and thaws occurred less often he grew less and less. 

His antlers almost never stopped growing. 

They grew steadily, like the branches of an edelwood tree, fanning out around his head. He allowed them to grow, ignoring them until they began to snag. 

When they became a nuisance, either too wide or too heavy he snapped them, or if he could find an appropriate tool, sawed them shorter.

But even they had slowed in their fanning growth in recent decades. 

Really, spending time in Pottsfeild, especially in the day when it was already taxing on his shadows, was a bad idea. 

And yet he did. 

And the warmth of Pottsfeild sun shone upon him and soaked up through his feet from soil that held its warmth long after dark. 

The humidity gathered along the ridges of his bark and seeped into his wood. 

The edging plenty at the edge of his consciousness hummed against him, and if he had roots, he is certain they would have shifted towards it. 

It was no wonder something deep inside of him began to stir, and grow.

And really, autumn and spring were so alike to a creature that lived in frost.

Could his form really be blamed for thinking it was time to bloom?

His blooms come faster than he grows, so long suppressed he supposes. 

The green buds unfurl into wide leaves, decorating his desolate winter crown in jade, their leafy canopy encircling him. 

They’re only there for three days when his antlers begin to itch again. 

They’re not done. 

Little yellow capsules sprout among the leaves, sharp as an axe in the darkness he does not recognize them until they bloom.

Strictly speaking the Beast is not one particular type of tree, and so he does not always grow the way a tree would, his blooms not always those that should grow on trees. 

So when the yellow bloom spreads open into a golden star that belongs on a vine rather than a branch he groans. 

Pumpkin blossoms. 

Enoch was going to get a kick out of this.


End file.
